The finished product, according to 21st Century liberal folklore and revisionism, will bear little resemblance to the original story.

The estate of Harper Lee has filed a lawsuit against the producers of a highly-anticipated Broadway adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, arguing that the Aaron Sorkin’s script “departs from the spirit of the novel”.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in Alabama by the late author’s lawyer Tonja Carter, alleges that Sorkin’s script has substantially altered Lee’s novel, despite a clause in the contract stipulating that “the play shall not derogate or depart in any manner from the spirit of the novel nor alter its characters”. The estate argues that Sorkin’s script alters several characters, including Atticus Finch – a lawyer who defends Tom Robinson, a black man unjustly accused of rape.

In typical left-wing social justice fashion, the Left tells us how we should interpret history, and further, how we should augment modern iterations of traditional artistic works into more racially palatable commentaries redolent of modern mores. Rather than writing new crap, they kill the old crap.

And they tell us how to think. This is the sanctimonious, preachy ploy that the Left assault us with.

But the estate of Harper Lee is having none of it.

The lawsuit cites a Vulture interview with Sorkin at the 2017 Toronto film festival, in which the screenwriter said that “as far as Atticus and his virtue goes, this is a different take on Mockingbird than Harper Lee’s or Horton Foote’s [1962 adaptation starring Gregory Peck]”. Sorkin added that his version of the classic story of racism in the American south found Lee’s hero “becoming Atticus Finch by the end of the play”, and “in denial about his neighbours, and his friends and the world around him, that is as racist as it is … He becomes an apologist for these people”.

According to the lawsuit, the estate and Lee’s literary agent Andrew Nurnberg made repeated approaches to Hollywood producer Scott Rudin’s company, Rudinplay, letting them know that “for this classic, it is really important that any spin put on the characters, not least Atticus, does not contradict the author’s image of them”.

And the most revealing words defining the motivation of these ulterior social justice warriors disguised as “entertainment icons” is this quote from Scott Rudin himself.

Rudin told the New York Times: “I can’t and won’t present a play that feels like it was written in the year the book was written in terms of its racial politics. It wouldn’t be of interest … The world has changed since then.”

Yes, understood, Mr. Rudin, but your job is to preserve the thematic integrity of the story, not to overwrite its structure with the sappy post-racial consciousness that is proving to be an aesthete-killer in today “entertainment” world.